Tuesday, December 31, 2013

This the first entry of a number from central Europe, from a trip we took almost on impulse and for which I am thoroughly grateful. Here, though, is how it began.

After a number of delays, the most frustrating of which was the drag
through London Heathrow, Rhonda and I touched down at the first destination of
our trip. Relieved to be off a plane for
the next ten days, we found ourselves at the Liszt Ferenc International Airport
in Budapest.

The plane had
taken us over huge, scudding clouds—sure sign of the storms that were beginning
to brew over the Atlantic and would hit Ireland and the U.K. pretty hard over
our visit to the continent. Yet above
the cloud cover the sky was wintry blue—a color so bright and pale that it
seems you would find it on ceramics rather than in the sky. And that was only the beginning of the
strangeness. All around us the incomprehensible consonant-twisting of Hungarian
that made me realize how much we would be at the linguistic mercy of our
hosts.

My second languages, you see, are dead and
buried—Latin and Old English—and yet they avail in so many circumstances. I speak very little Spanish, but can
understand more of it, as I can Italian and French. Thanks to the Teutonic roots of the Old
English, I can read enough German to go the right way on a one-way street and
recognize which bathroom is for the men. But I had no handle--absolutely none--on Hungarian, so I began by thinking that we would start
in the most estranged and "foreign" of the cities we planned to
visit—or, better said, in the city where we would be most estranged and
foreign.

Budapest was the last choice I made on the cities we
would visit—a choice made largely on convenience and expense. On both counts it had seemed better than,
say, Berlin or Warsaw, but I was beginning to have my doubts as our cab raced
through industrial stretches of Late Soviet architecture on the way to the city
center. I expected guards in
ushankas, spotlights, defecting
gymnasts. But of course, it was nothing
like that where we were headed, as I found in daylight.

Budapest, certainly at its center, has been largely
restored over the last seventy years.
The Germans and Russians trashed it in the last winter of World War II,
and you are hard pressed to find a building that remained undamaged. That includes the castle, the Parliament, and
the famous Fishermen's Bastion. After
the war, the landmark buildings were restored, with limited funds but to the
old designs, using archival materials to guide the reconstruction.

The result is a mixture of beauties, a Parliament
building that is breathtaking and a Fishermen's Bastion which, although
pleasing to the eye, struck me as somewhere between a gothic structure and a
Disney castle. And yet even that cobbled
arrangement had something urgent in its design, as though if you didn't raise
it quickly and right, something would be lost forever.

It was T.S. Eliot who said, "These fragments have
I shored against my ruin". It was
the people of Budapest who shored their own fragments by a careful
attentiveness to what had gone before, to what they remembered. It had to have been foreign to them—their homes
flattened, the Soviets all over them and settling in to stay for fifty years—but
what they managed to do along the Danube, guided by memory and archive, was to
reconstruct an old identity out of guesswork and hope. You can see the seams between buildings, the
difference in a ground floor that remained intact and the facsimile upper
stories: nothing quite connects like it did in, say, the 1920s, but things have
been connected in honorable and lovely ways.

After all, the architects of old gothic cathedrals
shored fragments by considering no work complete.Each building was a slow accumulation of what
had gone before, a trust in the imperatives of both tradition and change.On a foggy day, like our first full day in
Budapest, you could stand on the ramparts of Buda and look across the river at
the government buildings of Pest, glimpsing them as you can in my attached photo, as they seemed to take shape
in a fog that hovered between settling and breaking.

Thursday, August 8, 2013

Two weeks ago, Rhonda and I were up at the Ten Thousand
Buddhas Summit Monastery, a secluded and beautiful site about fifteen minutes
from our house in Corydon.We were there
at the invitation of the Reverend Thich Hang Dat, at a luncheon in honor of
Mayor Greg Fischer's visit to the monastery.For those of you outside our area, that's the Mayor of Louisville, Rhonda's ultimate boss in Louisville
Metro.

We were at the event independently (i.e. not part of the
Mayor's entourage) but we sat at the same table with him and Rev. Hang Dat—very
pleasant company among two engaging and intelligent community figures.Rhonda knows the Mayor, of course, and though
I can't claim more than a passing acquaintance, I think he's a good man and a
good mayor.Before things settled in for
the luncheon, he asked us, "Are you Buddhists?"

And hence the subject of the blog.

Rhonda gave a longer and very thoughtful answer to the
question.Like a good Catholic girl (and
I mean that description in the best sense possible) she said that no, we
weren't Buddhists, but that we were drawn by the spirituality and kindness of
the tradition, especially as we saw it in display among the people in the
Summit Monastery's community.We've been
there a few times, she informed the mayor, and always come away with a sense of
welcome and hospitality.

There was nothing in that answer with which I disagree.Mine would have been shorter: to the mayor's
inquiry as whether I was a Buddhist, I would have to say, simply, "Not
yet."

As I understand, to become an "official card-carrying
Buddhist", one "takes refuge" in1) a belief in the Buddha's enlightenment and example to those who seek
their own enlightenment, 2) a belief in the dharma (the basic Buddhist
teachings), and 3) an embrace of the sangha,
the Buddhist community of faith.As of
now, I'm inclined toward taking refuge, though I'm spending some time in
mindful consideration of what is an enormous spiritual step.

The meditation I've been doing, under the guidance of Rev.
Hang Dat and (of course) on my own, is a practice that is already bearing
enormous psychic rewards: if I go no further into Buddhism than simply
meditating morning and evening and being more mindful in the way I pass my
days, that alone will make this experience worth my while in abundance.I am very new to meditation, but already
notice an equilibrium and focus that I've experienced only at moments before,
and certainly never in a daily, sustained fashion.I have a feeling that if I am observant, I'm
pushing the second heart attack out of the way and enabling emotional and
physical health.Those are good things.

The rest of the bargain I'm puzzling through.And here are some of the issues.

I've never been a believer in a personal God, which is the
kind of deity that most of my Christian and Jewish friends profess.I tried to be for fifty years, because I can
remember distinctly not believing when I was about four or five, feeling awful
then as though something was really wrong with me, and masking the disbelief
with excuses, compromises, false professions of faith.Folks, I did this for half a century—partly because
I feared facing the distance and disfavor of some people around me, but not so
much that as something else: a kind of residual fear like the one in the old
Blood Sweat and Tears song…to myself, I swore there was no heaven and I prayed
there was no hell.I respected and even
envied the faith of some of my friends, especially when I saw it give life and
breath to their actions, and even more so when I saw it emerge from an
intellectual and emotional vigor I respected.That faith was apparent to me in a few of the people I knew, and it was
probably at work where I didn't see it in others.I always respected it (except for about a 3-year
period in late high school and early college, but nobody respects anything at
that time, so I apologize to you and forgive myself in one fell swoop for that
particular irreverence).

Buddhism has a wide range of belief
on this issue.The Buddha himself never
talked much about metaphysics, and there's that wonderful metaphor of the arrow
in one of the sutras, which in short says that if you're shot with a bow, the
first thing you think of is how to tend the wound rather than who made or fired
the arrow.I really understand this:
metaphysical ultimates are so far beyond my grasp that I have to leave the jury
out.If you know the essential truth and
ground of your being, again I envy you because I don't.What I do know is that it makes sense to live
the happiest and most mindful life you can, for yourself, for those around you,
and for the community of living creatures at large.When the time comes to answer for that, I
hope to do so without regret or reservation.It's making a beautiful thing of the here and now, tending to the
well-being of others as well as of yourself.I think that's the heart of the good life in most religious traditions:
if we learned it from some divine and ultimate source, evolved it as an idea of
the best way to live with each other, or whether it was a combination of these
things or something else entirely, I have no idea.

But I do know this.If you believe in that kind of living and
don't subscribe to a Christian theology, then you're pretty much out to lunch
with many Christians.If you don't buy
the metaphysics, you fall grievously and eternally short.In other words, if you swear there ain't no
heaven, you get the hell you've been praying all along doesn't exist.It's clear cut, either/or, and it still
scares me.Not that I've found out what
to do with that fear.But Christianity
tells me that what I should do with it is to believe something I don't believe.The idea of hell scares the hell out of me, I
know it's residual from childhood when it was stoked by being afraid that I
couldn't believe what everyone around me seemed to believe, and it's strange
how something so early and primal stays with you, like the tattoo you got when
you were drunk.

Is such a fear a sign that somewhere, deep
down inside me, I believe some early teaching I have since forgotten?Maybe or maybe not.I don't believe that a fear of hell is the
only thing on which I can base a worldview, because a worldview born out of
fear strikes me as brittle, miserable, and ultimately weak. So is a worldview born of exclusion, and as much as I love the commitment and dynamism of some Christians I know, I get a little exasperated when others circle the wagons.

I know, I know…Buddhism (or some
Buddhism, or most) has the whole thing of reincarnation.Something that a skeptic finds a little out there, a little hard to
believe as well.But here's the thing
about that.The life Buddhism sets before one
who takes refuge may have a past, but it is not contingent on the past—whether your own or a previous
life you've lived, or even whether you lived that previous life in the first
place.It's about the mindfulness of now, the intensification and deepening
of the time you have, and of finding a way to share that kind of poetry with
others.

This time next year, if I see the
mayor and he asks that question again (as well he might, because when you meet
so many people, how can you keep track of what you've said to each one?) my
answer may be the one Rhonda gave, the one I give in this writing, or something
altogether different from both or either.It will be, however, the fruit of thought and mindfulness and
meditation, and of the gratitude for brushing against a tradition every bit as
ancient and profound as the one that I've never quite grasped, even though I wanted to. It took fifty years to find Buddhism, and whether it's a destination or a way station on the road, I wanted my friends to know I'm spending some time exploring the surroundings.

Friday, August 2, 2013

Like the late arrivals we often are, Rhonda and I are just
now watching the first season of HBO's Game
of Thrones. I happened to luck into
a remarkably bargain-priced set of the DVDs at our local Joe's Records, and
picked them up because many of you have recommended them, because they're high
fantasy, and since I started my writing career working in that genre….well, you
know the rest.

My reaction to the show has been mixed favorable. The acting, the production values, and the
Northern Ireland sets are, to my way of thinking, pretty wonderful. I've liked Sean Bean for ages, it seems, and
having him anchor the cast is, to me, one of GOT's principal strengths.

But hold on a minute.
Does he really anchor a cast or is he just one among a helluva lot of
people—so many that I'm finding myself looking at the guide in the DVD set
because I can't tell the players without a scorecard? Baratheon mingles with Stark and Lannister (there
are also the blonde ones whose name eludes me—super-entitled wicked brother,
gradually empowered sister) until I find
myself stopping the disc, tottering on the edge of lost until I piece together
who's who, the image frozen on the screen.

This is digital narration rather than the television or the
film I grew up with, so I am forced to scramble a little—not a bad thing for a
budding geezer. It's the kind of
"cast of hundreds" you can pull off if your last name is Tolkien or Tolstoy,
the leniency of prose fiction allowing the reader to backtrack and cross-reference. But I'm not as used to it in film or video,
and GOT is asking me to access the
story in a way that's relatively new to me.
And I'm grateful for that gauntlet being thrown down, for something
asking me to venture into unfamiliar realms of "reading".

Having said that, I'd really like to see the elements of the
fantastic more in play in the series, fulfilling some of the stark (pun
intended) promise of the first few minutes.
We're on the eighth episode, and it seems to be returning, but that's a
long time to wait. The preternatural
lurks at the margins of the narrative, and we glimpse moments of it, but it's
almost as though it's an afterthought, a kind of hood ornament on the
far-ranging Byzantine intrigue. Whatever
one can say about Jackson's Lord of the Rings (and I've heard ranging opinions,
from loving to loathing), the fantasy is integral to what happens on
screen. I also found it far easier to
tell one character from another, but I'm not reliable on that, since I know LOTR better than any book other than my
own, and leaned on that knowledge as I watched the movie. People who were introduced to Tolkien via the
Jackson films might well have found some rough going in growing acquainted with
all the characters, but the film (and Tolkien's novel) have the advantage of
convening the whole bunch at the Council of Elrond, so that their dispersal
becomes easier to follow in the last two books of the trilogy; GOT, on the
other hand (at least the TV series—I can't speak for the novels, though I suspect
they do the same) moves its characters from distant sources toward convergence,
so that the advantage of contrasting one dirty-haired Boromir-type with another
goes clean out the window, and I've been looking at them as family members
rather than individuals in order to tell them apart.

Something else, though, has always set apart fantasy from
other modes of storytelling—especially the high fantasy version of the
genre. We often laugh about how many
high fantasies involve the "rag-tag group who save the world from ultimate
evil" but they do this because high fantasy deals in the Big Idea, the
quest, the important issue, and rests on the premise that ultimately, the world
is worth saving. Martin's Westeros is up
for grabs, and I have yet to get a sense of what's at stake beyond raw plays for
power, and I am, as I said before, eight episodes in. That's 4/5 of Season 1.

And this bothers me.
In high fantasy, the stakes should be high for everyone involved, and I
get the feeling that these intrigues at the uppermost levels of fantasy
politics will make little difference to those who live day by day in Westeros,
something you wouldn't have said about the events that take place in Middle
Earth or Earthsea. Maybe it's high
fantasy with the postmodern turn of "no grand narrative"? If that's the case, I suspect I'm going to
feel cheated ultimately, like in so many postmodern stories: shimmering surface
gives way to a kind of self-referentiality, a kind of brittle thinness.

All in all, the attempt to set down the War of the Roses or
Jacobean intrigue in the midst of an alternative world may or may not end up
successfully; I'm suspending judgment and enjoying the sumptuous visuals, the
neat suspense of the self-contained episodes, and not yet worrying my pretty
little head about a more nagging concern: the lack of a grand thematic design
of the whole work (so apparent in Tolkien's books and in Jackson's film version
of them). Grand design is something I
like in heroic fantasy, just as integral to the genre as the preternatural
mythic stuff; however, I'm beginning to fear that, once you get beyond the dark
visual beauties of George R.R. Martin's Westeros, it'll end up being kind of like Gertrude Stein's Cleveland, in that "there's no there
there".

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Those of you who know me on a
daily basis won't be surprised to hear this, but of late I've been drawn to
Buddhism. It's a long story, and
something for another blog entry, but not this one. This is about what the Buddhists call
"Right Speech", which they hold to be he best, wisest, and most
productive way to talk to one another. What I'm doing is a rambling riff on the principles of right speech, as they apply to writing and, I guess, how I try to speak to other people. This passage comes from the Cunda Kammaraputta Sutta translated from the Pali byThanissaro Bhikkhu; the
numbering is my own.

And how is one made
pure in four ways by verbal action? 1. There
is the case where a certain person, abandoning false speech, abstains from
false speech. When he has been called to a town meeting, a group meeting, a
gathering of his relatives, his guild, or of the royalty, if he is asked as a
witness, 'Come & tell, good man, what you know': If he doesn't know, he
says, 'I don't know.' If he does know, he says, 'I know.' If he hasn't seen, he
says, 'I haven't seen.' If he has seen, he says, 'I have seen.' Thus he doesn't
consciously tell a lie for his own sake, for the sake of another, or for the
sake of any reward. Abandoning false speech, he abstains from false speech. He
speaks the truth, holds to the truth, is firm, reliable, no deceiver of the
world. 2. Abandoning divisive speech
he abstains from divisive speech. What he has heard here he does not tell there
to break those people apart from these people here. What he has heard there he
does not tell here to break these people apart from those people there. Thus
reconciling those who have broken apart or cementing those who are united, he
loves concord, delights in concord, enjoys concord, speaks things that create
concord. 3. Abandoning abusive
speech, he abstains from abusive speech. He speaks words that are soothing to
the ear, that are affectionate, that go to the heart, that are polite,
appealing & pleasing to people at large. 4. Abandoning idle chatter, he abstains from idle chatter. He
speaks in season, speaks what is factual, what is in accordance with the goal,
the Dhamma, & the Vinaya. He speaks words worth treasuring, seasonable,
reasonable, circumscribed, connected with the goal. This is how one is made
pure in four ways by verbal action.

In a nutshell, then, a way of talking to each
other. I've seen this formulated into
questions you might ask yourself before speaking. You might have another version, another way
of addressing how you talk to those around you, but what follows is my version,
what I'm getting from this teaching, filtered through some of the things I'm
learning as a novelist. These are
questions that I forget to ask myself sometimes, both in my work and in my
daily dealings with all of you. So I'm
renewing the promise: I'm going to ask myself these things in the coming days. I'm going to break the promise, and I'm going
to promise them again because long experience as a writer and as a human being
tells me that the things below add up to a kind of "right speech", a
way for us to use language in books, in discussion, and in all kinds of
conversations. So, before I speak—either
aloud or on paper—I'll be asking myself…

How do you know this thing you're about to say? Lots of
treatments of Right Speech present this as "Are you sure?" Lots of people I know, however, are always sure, whether they admit it
or not, or whether it ends up that they are actually right. I'm not much of a postmodernist,
but I'm enough of one to know that surety is a pretty high bar to jump
(postmodernists are sure of nothing except that everything is uncertain—of
that, they're absolutely sure). So I'll put surety to the test by thinking
about the source of my information, "citing my sources". Do I speak from personal
experience? From anecdote? From an explanation of the subject by
one of you? Out of something I've
read? Seen on television? None of these sources—not even FOX
News—are always wrong, but when you look at the list, you'll probably come
to the same conclusion I have: that none are always right. Neither am I. Nor you. Does that mean you should not voice an
opinion? I don't think so. What's helpful to me in my version of
the question is that it asks me to think about where I learned this, and
to proceed with the knowledge that I just might be mistaken. Those who know me can vouch for my own
failings in being humble in this, but it's something I work on as a
novelist as well: there's always a danger to a story if the writer tends
to preach, to proclaim, to rant. I
find myself more tempted to do so as I get older, because I've lived a
long time without seeing certain things get fixed, and sometimes it gets
frustrating to know that they are not gonna
get fixed, that they are unfixable given the human condition. But as a novelist, you always consider motive, how the character comes to
his behavior and what makes him do the things he does. If you hijack the plot and
characterization to suit your personal agenda, you're setting up one of
the ways that a book can go bad.

Does what you're saying create concord? This
is the question at which a lot of my community fails, since most of my
friends are pretty individualistic, not doctrinaire with their
philosophies, theologies, politics.
We tend to characterize the other
guy as doctrinaire, of course, but not ourselves—we call it as we see
it. The longer I live as a
novelist, the more I understand this question through my own work. Characters who are doctrinaire become
pretty much uninteresting as primary actors in a piece of fiction: they
can be great foils or cameos or walk-ons, all of which help define the
main characters, the ones you are interested in, the ones who change,
question and contradict themselves, and otherwise comprise a good subtle
story. But for all that
individualism, they're part of a larger story—events that move toward meaning and a kind of
resolution. Which I think is what
I'm looking for in living, even if I don't find it a lot (or even most) of
the time. It's what most people are
looking for, at least in my experience.
And our conversation should reflect that. The idea is to find common ground so
discussion can begin: the sutta talks about reconciling thosewho
have broken apart or cementing those who are united, and I think if we
are going to live together, that should be in our sights.

Is it kind? Of the four questions, this one
is probably the least obviously connected to my life as a writer. Start by saying I follow a number of the
Buddhist framings of abstaining from
abusive speech. Language is my
medium: I use it to make up people and events, and I should honor it by
dedicating myself to its precise and evocative use. That means a number of things: that I
should attend to grammar and usage, so that each sentence is intentional;
that I should understand the characters who emerge from my words and honor
their motives; that I should honor the writing rather than writing for
honor. Kindness, in its most
interpersonal form (because ultimately kindness has to do with how we
treat others), leads me to questions of professionalism: Writers can be exasperating, ego-ridden
people, and I have been among the worst offenders. But it's an ego-based calling to begin
with. We tend to forget that people don't have
to read our work, that their generosity in doing so is, in some ways, a
call to our gratitude and kindness. It can be humbling to remember that. And
those who hold egos in check are usually the most kind and (to me) among
the most admirable. As I write
this, I think of my friends Marian Allen, Stephen Zimmer, and most of all
Margaret Weis, who is (next to my wife, Rhonda) the best person I
know. One other thing about abusive
speech: Being kind doesn't mean you have to agree, just that you should
strive for civility. Lanny Davis, a
former advisor to President Clinton, has written on how to re-introduce
politeness into American conversation, especially when we are disagreeing:
he says to start with the facts, to put them on the table, and then discuss. Now, sometimes discord in this country (perhaps
worldwide, but certainly in this country) often has reaches the point that
we can't even agree on some of the facts.
But trying to establish them has a tendency to cool down the
conversation. And folks, please consider the possibility
that name-calling is not discussion? I don't tend to cut off conversations unless you're calling people names. Finally, yes, sometimes there is kindness in correction, but see #1 above
before you start correcting?

Is it necessary? The
sutta speaks to idle chatter. I
suppose that's gossip and superficiality.
But necessity also suggests that there's a right time to say
things. As a novelist you have to learn when to introduce detail,
situation. It's pacing, timing, the
soul of good narrative, and something I wrestle with all the time, often
unsuccessfully. But I still attend
to it, still think about when it's right to bring something up. This also is useful to think about when
we are in conversation: someone I knew quite well, rest her soul, would
say hurtful things, then justify having done so with "I had to say it". Well, she really didn't have to.
Sometimes I've found it best to be quiet, when people are neither listening
nor ready to listen. If I had
offered my opinion, it might have been a kind of "vanity press"—unleashing
words into a conversation that are not shaped and chosen and polished to
be heard.

A lot of things went down in
this blog: writing and Buddha and everyday conversation. All of which centers on acts of
attention. I'm not great at tuning in, but my
work and temperament and life in general improve when I attend to right speech.

Saturday, April 13, 2013

In the late 80s and early 90s, I turned out eight books at
what was, for me, a rapid pace. I was
involved at the university by that time, and remember a number of people
observing that I was "prolific" and "cranking them out"—phrases
used with contempt, as though I was spreading germs by sneezing in an
elevator. They always observed this
under a mask of objectivity, a mask that didn't hide the curled-up lip very
well—the expression of disdain that we academics always use for something we
don't understand.

They're wrong and they're right, you know. At least given my current writing rhythm and
rate of production. I see people caught
up with a kind of marketing fever, preoccupied by the fear that they will pass
from the knowledge of readers if they don't publish a couple of books a
year. And they, too, have a point: a friend of mine wanted to do an article on
my work for Louisville Magazine back in the late 90s, only to have the proposal
rejected because "he hasn't published in five years" (I'd published
two books in the five years in question, so whoever said this was mistaken, but
the observation tells you something—that publishing is, understandably,
fascinated with what is most recent).

But I don't work that way anymore. Writing a book is, for me, a long gestation,
as ideas, plots and subplots, and additional characters introduce themselves
over the course of several years, and in ways that connect and deepen what I'm
working on, ways I could not hope to attain if I kept up the pace I set twenty
years ago.

I think of two models of creation. God made the world in seven days, according
to Genesis 1 and 2. I don't believe for
a moment that this is a literal account of how the world got done (whether or
not it's helpful as a metaphorical account is the subject for someone else's
blog); far more reasonable to assume that creation was the slow process all the
scientific evidence indicates. That's
how good things get done in nature, and as I grow older, I have come to
appreciate that process, to know in my bones that faster is not better.

And no, you young 'uns out there: it's not that I'm old and
tired. My age and weariness may show
itself in other things, but a slow writing is to me harder work. Instead of thinking about a book for six
months, I think about it for two or three years, turning its possibilities in
my hand, seeing it from various angles, like you'd do when you were a kid
tilting a prism to the light. I love working
on books, and I love doing the work at my pace, in my time.

I do want to publish, mind you, and I do dread the
possibility of being passed by in an industry that, as Shakespeare said of Time,
"hath a wallet at its back/Wherein it keeps alms for oblivion". But don't be too quick to delight in the fact
that I'd like to see my books in print: the best part of this job—hands down,
nothing else about it even remotely
close—is the writing itself.

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Those of you who see me at the Authors Fair in Madison this
coming weekend may take note that, yes, I have lost a substantial amount of
weight—24 pounds in six weeks by the last count (my weigh-ins are on Friday
mornings, and it is a Wednesday as I write this).In fact, you should take note of the weight loss, damn it, because this is one
of the harder things I have done this millennium.

I am not using this occasion to cite obesity statistics
(which are appalling, granted) or to wax self-righteous about this
accomplishment.I flat-out have to lose
weight, what with a heart condition and the bone structure of an
eleven-year-old girl (don’t believe me?Then
check out my wrist size next time we meet).Heart medicine has put on weight that only dieting and exercise can take
off, and when I woke from unsettling dreams to see that my identity had been
stolen by a dumpy, 75-year-old Irishman, I decided it was time to transform.

Here is how I've done it, but first a caveat.This is not a pleasant journey, and if you
have another way, please choose it, with my blessings. Choose it FOR YOURSELF, if you feel you need it. In return for those blessings (which I give
you gladly, no matter if you keep this part of the bargain), I ask only that
you not share with me your far easier, sleeker and sexier method of
weight loss.The world is filled with
internet experts, and my version, though painful, has goddamned worked for me
this far.

Here's my schedule:

7 am: Slimfast

12 noon: Slimfast

2-5 pm: Blind, craving-fueled rage at all around me—students,
friends, family, the cosmos—telling myself the uncomfortable truth that it is
not real hunger, it's just having been spoiled by too much to eat.

5-6 pm: Supper with reasonable, rest-of-the-world
portions.Not the Amurrikan ones where
you can't see the news from over the tumulus of carbohydrates on your
plate.All the while wishing you could
eat until your spouse says, "That's it, honey.The town is entirely out of food."

8-10 pm:Go to
sleep.The earlier the better, to stop
thinking about it.

I bought this plan on the long term.Reached fifty years old without a concept of portion
size or calories.Now I know that
"portion size" = "leaving the table hungry". And whatever
you like has too much calories.So I have to stop
putting so much of what I like into my mouth.

I believe I'll reach my target weight, which is still ten
pounds away.And then maybe I can shed
some of my housecat mentality, which is basically yearning for the next meal
and the next nap.Yes, it's distracted
me from my best work, but I figure my worst work may come after a fatal heart
attack, so I'll put up with this until I'm ten pounds lighter.Then see if I can eat something I like once
in a while, and weigh every Friday to derail the Fat Irish Express back to the
weight I was at when this whole irritating business started.I do believe this is a craving, like when I
quit smoking, different only in the fact that, with the diet, I'm giving up
some of what's good for me because it's too much.It's a space that can be filled with other
things.

Like compliments on how good I look.So tell me that.Even if you don't mean it.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Even my most libertarian friends, with their dreams of
desert freeholds or serene isolation from the rest of us, have to own up,
sooner or later, that we live in a community.That unless you are Ted Kaczynski, making bombs and
manifestos in an isolated cabin, you'll have to deal with people in a way that
is civil and constructive, even if it isn't always friendly.

This is where slack-cutting is of value.The quality that lets slide the irritating
quirks of others, usually with phrases like "Oh, that's just [him/her]"
or "I have to work with [him/her] later, so I'll let it go".

Public hostility is different.Recently I was rudely and aggressively
insulted in front of a large crowd.I
had respected the offender, and in some ways I still do—in ways that will be
enough to work with her if I am called upon to do so.After her tantrum I can no longer like her,
but I've cut slack to a practical ground, where any contact I have with her can
be useful, though I am reasonably sure it can no longer be pleasant.

Fiction writing—or at least some of the characterization
that a fiction writer does—can begin in cutting slack.You let things slide because you're
interested in seeing where they head, because you realize they may make good
copy up the road.But it's good as well for
people who do other things.

I tend to pace in the classroom.It's because I can't stand still when the
ideas are good.I can see that it might
unsettle someone: twice in twenty-five years of teaching, people have
complained, but for the most part my students put up with it, out of their own
kindness and graciousness and, I certainly hope, a returned respect for me and
for my forgiveness of late papers, class-cutting, and improvised apologies and
excuses for the aforementioned.I also
hope they get excited by the ideas as well, and realize we all have different
ways of making that known.

Still, when I saw a student evaluation that expressed real
discomfort with my pacing—that went on about it for a paragraph or so—I took
stock of my habit.This was
mid-semester, on a large internet site, so it gave me time to correct my
behavior to less discomfort a student who was apparently very upset about
it.I tried to check the pacing—a practice
I found a little distracting myself, since I had to call myself out on a number
of occasions—but I figured the class was about the students instead of about
me, so I could adjust as much as I could.And the student mentioned that it had gotten better…in the four
subsequent evaluations where she registered complaints that it had happened to begin
with.

Yes, I said 'she', because it wasn't hard to figure out who
it was.She dropped pure factual information
into the paragraph—the course she was taking from me, and that she was taking
yet another simultaneously—so I knew instantly.Don't ever think you're that opaque on
anonymous evaluations.She graduated
before three of the five complaining paragraphs were published, but in her
aftermath she left me thinking:

First time, maybe the second time, the problem was about
me.By the fifth time, it's about you,
my dear.

Which speaks to cutting slack.One thing we can learn is how to do it.Because the things about someone else are
sometimes about you.I've learned it too
often in my own life, made too many mistakes, indulged too many bad quirks and
habits, to not hope for slack from those of you I have offended.Which doesn't mean that your own little performances
won't show up in something I write someday.